Dr. Bobo, Federal Poppycock, and our Green Truck

Last month on one of these mornings, we noted the acquittal of Tuscaloosa's Dr. Bobo, after two trials and seven years of legal battles concerning charges of bid-rigging state medical-service contracts. His close friend, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, was convicted of related charges and is now in prison. This month, their stories were the focus of hearings on Capitol Hill in the widening Congressional probe of politicization of Justice Department prosecutions. 

Back in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa News recently published several letters to the editor such as this one:

"God bless Dr. Bobo. God bless the jury for seeing through the federal prosecutor’s poppycock, and God bless Tuscaloosa through Dr. Bobo’s hands. He’s the best in town, and we sorely need his expertise in his continued practice of medicine."

            For our last word on this affair, we turn to Ted Stein, who has a different take on Dr. Bobo: "His whole family," writes Ted, "had an almost mafia like belief in their own entitlement and their ability to buy whatever and whomever they want, including the ability to get out of trouble for whatever they do.

            "[At a party one night] his son was drunk off his ass and slammed his brand new BMW into your green truck, which was parked in front of his car.

            "His car was severely damaged -- radiator, front right fender, hood, bumper, grill, etc.. The truck had a tiny bit of white paint and a negligible dent. 

            "He drove off.

            "Dr. Bobo called me minutes later and told me that he would pay for everything and something for my troubles if I didn't call the police. Like an idiot, I told him, honestly, that there was no meaningful damage and I had no troubles. He asked if I was going to call the police and I told him no. He thanked me and, I'll bet, promptly forgot about me. 

            "The BMW was brand new again a few days later.”

Superman's Neighborhood

I was three years old when we moved to Silver Spring, Maryland; this picture was probably taken a few months later, in the spring of 1955.

All the houses in the neighborhood were brand new. All the families in them were young like ours, and the houses were financed with GI mortgages; all the fathers had fought in World War II. There were so many kids that the new school they built just for us was overcrowded the day it opened, and we kindergartners took turns being absent from school on purpose, to reduce class size; my "drop day" was Wednesday.

In the house just behind us in the picture lived a family named Clark, and they had six children, the oldest of whom was Kent Clark. This was confusing to me, because Superman was Clark Kent. In the other house visible in the background of this picture lived a family named Lane, whose children included Peggy and Skippy, but oddly, no Lois. When my mother went back to school at the University of Maryland, Peggy Lane used to babysit for me and my brother and sister, and our family shared a lawn mower with them

In 1961, we moved to a larger house in another neighborhood . Last summer, my parents and I returned to Benson Terrace to look around. The houses were well cared for, and many had been added onto over the years. There were large shade trees. All the "parking strips" had been paved over to make driveways. Most of the homeowners now are Vietnamese, and the nearby shopping centers feature stores and restaurants with signs in Vietnamese.

The neighborhood school has been closed for years; enrollment plummeted after we baby boomers grew up, and these houses were never again so densely packed with kids.

Keeping Us Safe

Third-grader John, wearing his baseball cap, soccer shirt, and basketball shoes, holds up a notebook bearing a slogan from a 1988 Maryland campaign to require seatbelt use. The notebook says, "Please buckle up. I care."

John's grandpa Bob had editorialized on behalf of the seatbelt law, and when it passed, he was given a metal road sign similar to the thousands that were to be posted around the state warning people that buckling up was now the law. We took the sign to Alabama and presented it to the principal of Uniersity Place Elementary School, who posted it in the school driveway, even though buckling up was not yet the law in Alabama.

We are safer today than we were before seatbelts. Keep on bucklin'.

Go Rams!

The concept of a Portland Ram is confusing in this part of Maine, where Portland High School teams are Bulldogs, and Portland's cross-town rival Deering is the school of the Rams (and the Lady Rams...). However, in England, there is a breed of sheep called Portland, and here we see the #1 champion  Portland ram in all of England, posed with his owner for a formal portrait taken by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the French photographer known for his "Earth From Above" exhibits of aerial photos. Before Arthus-Bertrand became a famous artiste, he made his living as a livestock photographer.

September is sheep-shearing season in New Zealand, where Richard and Arleigh, Norman's brother and sister-in-law, are in the midst of negotiations for a house that comes with three sheep on the lawn. They have named the three sheep, which were sheared yesterday, Curly, Lari, and Mow. The half-sheared Merino ram in the bottom picture here was also photographed by Arthus-Bertrand.

Call it four misses and a maybe.

Call it four misses and a maybe.

This guy does not play football for Navy. And these pictures weren't taken during football season, but on a warm afternoon last spring on the campus of Wyoming Seminary in Pennsylvania. On the last play of the afternoon, Allen was taken down by a brick wall that came out of nowhere.

Nurse Pavarotti

I intend no offense toward the late tenor, may he rest in peace, and I'm not certain but I want to believe that the people in this photo also intended no offense. It's just that seeing his name in the news reminded me of this scene from our trip to Estonia two summers ago.

England must not be a very fun country; groups of Brits seem to like to fly off for party weekends in other European countries. I'm told that Prague was a hot spot for a while, but recently the party scene has shifted to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, which is a little (very little) like New Orleans or Las Vegas in the United States. Swarms of partying Englishmen--many in t-shirts custom-printed for the occasion--mobbed the ferry between Tallinn and Helsinki. In Tallinn's Old Town, which is something like New Orleans' French Quarter, only about six hundred years older--some of the revelers wore party clothes and, in this case, party wigs. Here we see Nurse Alf and Nurse Pavarotti, out for an evening stroll (it was midsummer, so the evening was still quite sunny).

Below is a picture from a Midsummer Eve festival near Tallinn. Sadly, that's me, trying and failing at a traditional folk game. Part of the tradition is the cognac that precedes the game....

Twenty-nine

Norman is holding Ted, who looks to be a few months shy of his first birthday. The picture must have taken, then, in the spring of 1980--right around the time of Norman's 29th birthday. Next summer, when Ted turns 29, maybe we can get them to pose for a remake. Or maybe not.

Labor Day Labor

This weekend we painted the trim on the front of the house. Hank's friend Ryan supervised from on high while Hank took care of the finishing touches. Later, while the two of them sat on the roof polishing off a box of cookies, Joe came along and made off with the ladder....

Viking Laundry

Once upon a time, Vikings set sail in a wicker laundry basket. Then it got dark and they had to brush their teeth and go to bed. The End.

Back to School

The new school year started today in Portland. Seventeen years ago,  Joe sat in the front row and helped hold up the sign for the class picture of Miss Brandon's third grade  at University Place School in Tuscaloosa. That same year, Miss Brandon went to J.C. Penney's at the mall to have her eyes checked for a new pair of glasses, and she wound up marrying the optician.

Home from the War #1

In 1945, back in New York after wartime duty aboard a minesweeper, Norman's father, Joseph Stein, posed for a picture with his family. His younger brother Jack, who was about 14 years old in 1945, had grown taller than Joe while he was away.

Linkuva

My father's mother--whose maiden name was Rose Blumenthal--grew up in the small town of Linkuva in Lithuania, near the Latvian border. She left for America in 1900. Many, perhaps most, Jews emigrated from that region in the late 19th or early 20th century; those who stayed were all murdered during World War II.

The first two pictures show a main street in town, as it looked near the end and near the beginning of the 20th century. During the intervening 100 years, the only visible change is that the street is now paved. The political-economic-social-military-cultural upheaval and tragedy that characterized life in Eastern Europe throughout the century seem to have left no mark.

This house was home to a Jewish family in Linkuva in 1924.

The Blumsohn family of Linkuva posed for a photo in 1916.

Market Day in Linkuva, ca. 1916. Peasants from nearby farms would come to Linkuva to buy food and goods from the
Jewish merchants. The Blumenthal family had cows and sold the milk.

Little Cahaba

The Little Cahaba River flows through Bibb County, Alabama, about 30 miles south of Tuscaloosa. The water is fast but shallow, supporting knee-high clumps of white flowers in the springtime, Cahaba Lilies, which grow from cracks in the rocks of the riverbottom. Alabamians sometimes claim that these lilies are unique to the Cahaba watershed, but this is apparently incorrect; they also grow in a river in Georgia. Maybe with global warming they will soon follow us to Maine.

The Little Cahaba River in the wintertime.

Paradise

Photos and commentary by Katrin Maldre.

If you happen to be in Milano, it is only 4.90 euros that you need to get to the paradise. Train takes you there, and not even over, but through the mountains. Lago di Como is the place, and I have hard times of thinking of something more beautiful than it. Sure, I'm not the first one to discover it, but the summer heat kept the crowds moderate and brightened all the colors to the extent it all started to hurt. Why ever go to another place?

 I visited only two of the cities - Bellagio and Varenna, but in Varenna I was twice, just because the first time my camera had run out of the batteries and I couldn't leave without having some images to share, don't you think so? Maybe you won't believe otherwise? The abundance of pots and flowers and mountains and sun was such a dream for somebody from a potless and mountainless country as me, and I want to believe that they never have any winter. George Clooney who has a villa on the other side of the lake said that he spends there 40 days a year, and I think he will only increase the time when he becomes richer and had to work less (or can do more meaningful work). 

Chisel

In August 2001, the apples in the orchard in the upper-right corner of this picture were not yet ripe. But as we drove around the valleys in this region of Washington state near the town of Wenatchee, we saw clear evidence that harvest-time was approaching: people were pulling fruit boxes off the backs of trucks and piling them high at the edges of the orchards. I heard of one geology student who swiped a couple of those boxes for mailing rock samples; the rest of all used five-gallon plastic paint buckets, which we took to the post office  in Leavenworth, Washington, where the clerks were used to people shipping rocks in five-gallon buckets, at library rate.

On the last day of fieldwork that summer, we climbed this ridge near the mouth of Swakane Canyon, to examine an outcrop about a thousand feet above the valley. My adviser and two fellow students reached the outcrop long before I did; they determined that the garnets there were as advertised, whacked out a couple of samples, and then lolled in the shade of an overhang while I continued to climb. One of the other students, Carlos Zuluaga, stopped teasing me long enough to snap some pictures; for this shot, I took his suggestion and posed with the chisel in my mouth.

The outcrop was related to my thesis project, so they showed me the samples they'd collected and asked me  which one I wanted to carry back down the hill and onto the airplane, since we'd already mailed off our rock buckets. Then they teased me some more because I had trouble making up my mind. So far as I know, the rock I chose, labeled 01NC215, is still stored in the basement of Bevill Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama, but it didn't make it into my thesis. 

Dr. Bobo

This week in Tuscaloosa, Dr. Philip Bobo was acquitted of five corruption charges from an eight-year-old incident involving state medical service contracts. Dr. Bobo was head of the emergency department at the hospital in Tuscaloosa and also ran a clinic around the corner from our house in Forest Lake, called Emergi-Care, which treated members of our family from time to time for the various and sundry medical issues that keep happening in a houseful of growing boys. I always felt that Emergi-Care was a wonderful neighborhood amenity.

Dr. Bobo and his good friend, former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, had been in hot water ever since the Republicans took over from the Democrats in Alabama. Tuesday morning, the New York Times editorialized that as soon as the U.S. Department of Justice gets a new Attorney General, the role of Republican operatives in the Siegelman matter should be investigated. Siegelman is currently in prison. A jury deliverated for eight days before acquitting Dr. Bobo;  the Tuscaloosa News noted that his popularity in the community may have saved him.

Sad to say, meticulous good conduct is not what saved Dr. Bobo. It seems that he and Governor Siegelman were comfortable playing hardball with state money. Hardball can look like corruption after your party loses an election. And then the corruption charges can look corrupt themselves after the party in charge of charging loses an election......

Dr. Bobo

Young Ted

Somewhere around 1985, Ted became a horseman and won ribbons in a show. Then, in the summer of 1989, he tried skiing without skis down the warm but white slopes of Mt. Rainier, Washington.Somewhere around 1985, Ted became a horseman and won ribbons in a show. Then, in the summer of 1989, he tried skiing without skis down the warm but white slopes of Mt. Rainier, Washington.

Gifford's Ice Cream

Old front cover of the menu from the old Gifford's. In the woman's hand is a cup of hot fudge for a sundae.

Farm Day

The crops and the livestock are all...could be worse.

Sunday was Cow Pie Bingo Day in Portland. Kathryn Nekoie needed to raise several thousand dollars for charity in order to run in the New York Marathon this November. She chose the charity Kids First, and to raise the money she rented a cow from Smiling Hill Farm and offered for sale 400 raffle tickets at $10 each; each ticket gave the purchaser rights to claim one "square," about 2 feet by 2 feet, in a little pasture marked with lime and orange fencing on the Lyman Moore Middle School ballfield. If the cow pooped on your square, you won $500. The winner was the purchaser of Square 215, Lisa Naweel, Kathryn's husband's sister. The cow's name was Isabel, and she rents out at $300 for this sort of event. She was pregnant, and this was her very first Bingo affair. The farmer who chaperoned her for the event said that Isabel's attention was mostly focused on investigating whether or not the fence was electrified, a distinction she had learned to divine with her whiskers. She only had a few whiskers. Kathryn said the fund-raising was successful, and now she could concentrate on training for the marathon.

At the refreshmen stand, Schattie Nekoie was looking forward to wearing the tablecloth for her Halloween costume, but she wouldn't tell me what kind of costume it would be.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my tomatoes are still green, but still growing. They were planted July 1--late. I forget what kind of tomato they are scheduled to become.

Piano Man